This Tuesday, in honor of the Marijuana holiday 4/20, Young Americans for Liberty gave out free brownies and information on marijuana legalization. A bit farther from campus, California is debating a ballot proposition which would make the state the first in the nation to completely legalize the controversial plant. Marijuana legalization is an idea whose time has come. Though it would be enough to state that restrictions on consumption of a plant are an unconstitutional and immoral infringement of personal liberty, such arguments are unconvincing to the more tyrannically inclined among us. Thus, I have dedicated this article to the economic reasons, which suggest that the government’s war on weed has been counterproductive, inefficient, costly and unwarranted.

Nearly a year ago, I had a discussion with Fred Raines, a Washington University professor emeritus, and expert on the economics of marijuana. He showed me several studies which indicated that marijuana was used as a substitute for alcohol. The implications of such a finding are profound. Because of its less intoxicating effects and relatively quick recovery time, if marijuana were used instead of alcohol, incidents of accidents caused by DWI would dramatically decrease. Given the extent to which the government is willing to go to prevent DWI—as evidenced by the bill pending in the Missouri House, which authorizes warrantless blood tests on drivers—it seems like they should have no problem with removing a costly drug law which could be just as effective in reducing DWIs.

Raines also informed me of several studies, which found over 80 medical uses for marijuana. If the government would allow medicinal marijuana, billions could be saved on costly and dangerous pharmaceutical drugs which the government currently purchases through Medicare Part D and other programs. This reality, of course, ensures that Big Pharma will be no friend of future legalization efforts.

The legalization of marijuana could also reduce the great burden that the victimless herb places on our criminal justice system. Right here in Missouri, conservative Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court shocked legislators this year when he said the following in his State of the Courts address: “For years we have waged a ‘war on drugs,’ enacted ‘three strikes and you’re out’ sentencing laws, and ‘thrown away the key’ to be tough on crime. What we did not do was check to see how much it costs, or whether we were winning or losing. In fact, it has cost us billions of dollars and we have just as much crime now as we did when we started.” In a time when state budgets are hard-pressed to make ends meet, marijuana legalization should be one of the first issues on the table, for the costly enforcement of its illegality is a drag on our government and our economy with little to no tangible benefit.

The government should recognize that legalization is exactly the way to be tough on crime. Mexican cartels, inner-city gangs, and even Al-Qaeda admit that the drug trade is their major source of revenue. Legalization would cripple the funding of organized crime, while at the same time, stimulate the economies of law-abiding citizens. Furthermore, there has been an oft noted correlation between the rise in drug prices, caused by restricted supply, and an increase in crime rates within the given area. Many economists have theorized that because criminals use crime to generate revenue, an increase in the price of drugs requires criminals, who dedicate a disproportionate percentage of their income to drug consumption, to raise more revenue through crime in order to maintain the same level of narcotic enjoyment. Any sincere attempt to protect citizens from crime should involve a frank discussion of drug legalization.

So who wins from prohibition of marijuana? The alcohol industry wins. Pfizer, Bayer and Merck win. The prison-industrial complex wins. Organized crime wins. The American Bar Association wins. And who loses? Nearly everyone else. It’s time we stop locking people up for the rest of their lives for smoking a relatively harmless plant. Prohibition does not make economic sense, it does not make legal sense, and it does not make moral sense. The organized interests of prohibition will do everything they can to preserve this costly and ridiculous handout to their industries. It is important for the rest of us to ensure that they don’t win.

Philip is a sophomore in Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at pchristofanelli@hotmail.com.

In passing the bill, the Democrats’ rationale was that evil, greedy bankers were making a profit off student lending, adding to unnecessary costs. This theory is indicative of leftists’ broader worldview which fails to recognize the free market as the most efficient system for providing the best product at the lowest price. The profit motive is a major incentive for containing costs and lowering prices. When programs are taken from the private sector and placed in the epic sink-hole that is the federal government, all cost containment efforts disappear.

This education overhaul is a classic example of the government rising up to “correct” the problems which it caused in the first place. Tuition for higher education is not too high because of profit seeking bankers. Tuition is too high because massive subsidies by state and federal governments encourage it to be. When the government floods students with extra funds to pay tuition, universities have a direct incentive to raise their rates. If the government got out of the student loan business all together, university tuition would fall out of necessity.

The bill also lowers the amount which students have to pay out of pocket for their tuition, both at the time of their education and during the subsequent repayment period. Such efforts only lower the cost of taking out more loans. When the cost is lowered, many students will be encouraged to use more credit. As mentioned before, when loans increase across the board, tuition will increase as well, creating a self-defeating cycle that only benefits universities and not students.

Furthermore, the subsidization of higher education encourages students who would be better off learning a trade to go to a university. Students can see that subsidized higher education would be a much more enjoyable experience after high school than entering the job market. Or, as Milton Friedman put it, “Attending classes, taking examinations, getting passing grades—these are the price they pay for the other advantages [of being in college], not the primary reason they are there.” The end result is that many students go off to college, put themselves in debt, and leave with degrees which are of use to no one, or worse yet, no degree at all.

The bill also claims to help the less affluent attend universities, but you can bet your buttons that it won’t do that either. As described by Director’s Law, government programs which claim to help the poor are almost always designed to help the middle class at the expense of the wealthiest and poorest individuals. Wealthy individuals will not apply for the new federal grants. The poor will remain largely unaware of the program. Those who do apply will find college tuition still too expensive despite the grants. The middle class will be the only real benefactor.

In the end, students, the poor and everyone else would be much better off if the government just got out of the way. Prices would fall, and those for whom higher education makes economic sense would go to college; others may find that trade schools, sales, or entrepreneurship are more sensible opportunities and thereby save themselves from lifelong indebtedness. It is unfortunate that such an important issue was able to slip through the Congress without any real public debate. As a result, rising tuition will be the norm for years to come.

The founders of this nation were radical people. They believed firmly in inalienable rights. In the Declaration of Independence, they stated clearly that government existed among men in order to preserve and protect these rights. As soon as the government becomes destructive to this end, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish said government (and they didn’t mean by asking nicely).

So where did the founders get these ideas about the occasional need for violent revolution? From none other than the erudite philosopher, John Locke. In one of his most famous quotes, John Locke said, “whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.” That common refuge to which Locke refers is firearms, and the founders were keenly aware of this fact.

History has proven Locke’s concern to be fairly justified. The first thing which any tyrant does before massacring his people is to take away their weapons. Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot and Mao all were big fans of gun control. You can take all the statistics of how easy access to guns has led to higher crime rates or more accidental deaths, add them together, and you still wouldn’t reach a fraction of the human suffering which could have been avoided if the populace under any of one those tyrants were allowed to keep their arms. It is this concept which led to the creation of one of America’s foremost gun advocacy groups, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Not only does a well armed public serve as a deterrent to government tyranny, but also as a deterrent to foreign invasion. Take the case of the Swiss in World War II. The Swiss are some of the most well-armed people on the planet. Their wealthy country would have proved a boon to Hitler’s coffers had he decided to march across their nation as he did so many others. His generals warned him that taking over Switzerland would be a battle at every mile, however, because their population was so saturated with automatic weapons. Hitler ultimately decided to take an alternative route to France, saving the Swiss population countless deaths.

The moral of this story is, when it comes to firearm ownership, there are bigger issues than small increases in the number of violent crimes. Guns are the people’s last defense against catastrophes where the death toll is not in the thousands, but in the millions. Any serious discussion of gun policy in the United States should avoid getting bogged down in minor, technical details and remember the points in history when an automatic weapon would have come in handy.

Phil is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at pchristofanelli@hotmail.com.

A sales tax is a regressive tax. A regressive tax is the opposite of a progressive tax, like the U.S. income tax, which increases the tax burden as your income rises. The burden of regressive taxation falls most heavily on those with low-income and fixed budgets. Because the poor use a much higher portion of their income to fund their daily consumption, a much larger part of their earnings must be dedicated to any tax on consumption.

The argument is often made that the majority of St. Louis’ poor live in the city. This proposition imposes the sales tax only on the county, where the people are much wealthier. Those who make this argument are either ignorant or intentionally trying to mislead. Back in 1997, the city of St. Louis passed a sales tax increase to fund Metro, the deal being that if the county were ever to pass a similar tax, the city tax would be triggered. The passage of Prop A would trigger this tax in the city, and the poor would be forced to donate even more to the light-rail service they largely do not use.

The light-rail service, which Metro intends to expand with its new profits, is plagued by a whole host of special interest groups that use their power and influence to ensure that the rail service is provided to their stomping grounds. When light rail is installed, chancellors of powerful, wealthy universities can ensure that costly Metro stops are placed right outside their institutions. Light rail rarely goes to the places where the poor live and work. Consequently, the poor are largely dependent on the more-flexible bus service, which is often cut whenever light rail is expanded.

Many students at Wash. U. seem to support the expansion of light rail for environmental reasons. If they feel that strongly about the need to save the planet through Metro, I am sure they would be willing to sacrifice the obscene discount they receive on their Metro passes. If the Washington University community would pay the full price for the Metro services they use, Metro would bring in an additional $9.3 million yearly. Instead, Wash. U. only pays roughly 20 percent of the cost of a yearly Metro pass while simultaneously demanding that the poor make up the difference. That means a Wash. U. student pays $250 less for his yearly Metro pass than a disabled person. Low-hanging fruits such as Wash. U.’s discount should be addressed before we make demands on the poor.

According to the U.S. Census, of the roughly 1 million people who live in St. Louis County, only 10,000 actually use public transit. With the $160 million that would be brought in annually from the county to fund the Metro ($80 million in current revenue plus an increase of $80 million after Prop A), we could afford to buy all of the county’s public transit users a new car every year. The idea that such a small number of commuters should be allowed to benefit at such a high cost to everyone else is nothing short of highway robbery.

Milton Friedman once said, “There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.” If Prop A is allowed to pass, St. Louis citizens can expect Metro to be back asking for more in no time. Metro’s unfunded liabilities, a result of Cadillac pension plans, are enormously high. Its ultimate expansion desires are overly ambitious and incapable of being supported by St. Louis’ population density.

Washington University students should stop drinking Chancellor Mark Wrighton’s Kool-Aid and wake up to the fact that plundering the poor is an unjust way to get to and from school. If expanded Metro services are desired, Wash. U. can afford to contribute a little more before demanding that the taxpayers subsidize the transit. Until then, all of Washington University’s supposed “social justice” initiatives should be viewed with a skeptical eye. Helping the poor is a lot more difficult than giving up tomatoes.

Philip is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at pjchrist@wustl.edu.

Since its inception, global warming fanaticism has had nothing to offer the world but lower economic growth, guilt trips, alarmism, regulations and infringements on personal liberties. It is now clear that the carbon-regulated world desired by green advocates will never be a reality, and that their efforts to force their carbon-friendly environmental practices down the throats of the Washington University community are an utter waste of time and resources.

The real wake-up call for most Americans was the release of the Climategate e-mails. These e-mails, obtained by enterprising young hackers, showed scientists lamenting their inability to account for periods which lacked warming and conspiring to keep data out of the hands of skeptics. This sort of conniving is bad enough for the PR of the global warming movement, but things get worse when it has been shown that supporters of the movement have been propagating outright falsities.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s panel on climate change, has recently been caught verifying several wild exaggerations. First, the IPCC made the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, causing major ecological crises in the region. Next, the panel stated that up to 40 percent of the rainforests were in jeopardy due to increasing temperatures. Neither of these claims ended up being the product of peer-reviewed science research, but rather, of off-hand comments made in environmentalist magazines. Nonetheless, these propaganda pieces were allowed to have major effects on the public policy debate.

Furthermore, a series of inconvenient conflicts of interest have been revealed throughout the global warming alarmist community. Recent allegations have arisen that Dr. Rejendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, has held paid positions on various committees of financial institutions. While he claims that he donates all proceeds to his personal charity foundation, the lack of a conflict-of-interest policy for the IPCC panel leaves many wondering whose interests Dr. Pachauri is representing. Meanwhile, our friend Al Gore, owner of a private jet and one of the largest energy consumers in the state of Tennessee, has made millions from his global warming activism and from his personal carbon-credit company which he pushes as a solution to climate change. Right here in Missouri, the recipient of very lucrative tax credits to promote wind energy is none other than Tom Carnahan, brother of Congressman Russ and Secretary of State Robin. Major global warming and alternative energy advocates have been consistently proven to be interested in more than “cleaner” energy.

Whatever faith people had in climate change activists has long since evaporated. Yet, the goals of the fervent environmentalists never really had a chance of becoming law to begin with. As the Kyoto and Copenhagen climate summits demonstrate, it turns out that China and India are uninterested in sacrificing the sort of economic growth we have enjoyed in the United States in exchange for a vague promise of a potentially cooler climate in the distant future of generations not yet conceived. We can learn from the utter failure of the Cap and Tax Scheme in Congress that most Americans, already struggling with high energy costs, are unmoved by arguments stating that we need to be the first to sacrifice our lifestyle in an effort to reduce the world’s temperatures.

The possibility for global climate change legislation, if there ever was such a possibility, should be considered an idea as dead as the phlogistic theory of fire. So you can give us back our bottled water, cut out the local food fetish, take the propaganda off the garbage cans and let me wash my hands without being lectured about sustainability. These small changes come only from a desire to annoy and control other individuals, not from any sincere belief that they will have the slightest effect on the future of our global climate. I have no desire to partake in the religious conviction that we all must do a little part to change the climate regardless of the realities of global politics. Yet, I do understand others’ desire to participate in what they consider to be a moral obligation. Might I recommend you start by recycling the Obama stickers you all have on your cars? You probably won’t be needing those again anyways.

Phil is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at pchristofanelli@hotmail.com.

The two economic schools that changed the world, Keynesian and Austrian, manifest themselves in perpetual conflict throughout Obama’s first year. Keynesians preach that the government must rise up to stimulate spending when consumers are failing to do so. They see depressions as a decline in demand that the government has the main responsibility to end. Modern-day Keynesians call on the government to become the “buyer of last resort,” a phrase used by Robert Reich several days ago on “Larry King Live.” To this end, Obama has been a champion of the stimulus, hoping to spend the economy into prosperity.

The Austrian theory poses a very different idea of how to end a recession. They see recessions as the result of cheap money being circulated by a reckless central banking system. The low-rate loans allow more projects to be started by producers than consumers have the savings to afford to purchase. Recessions are the inevitable wake-up call from rising interest rates that cause producers to retract their projects. Followers of the Austrian school call for allowing the bad debt to be liquidated, not to stimulate production of items that the economy should not be consuming in the first place.

An Austrian would love for the government to end deficit spending. Freeing up the credit markets from government demand means cheaper credit for the business sector to rebound from its previous state of indulgence. Obama also bought into this theory. He recently called for a bipartisan panel (which failed to materialize) to address the growing deficit. He also wants to freeze domestic spending starting in 2011. Both of these are uniquely conservative ideas, even though no conservatives really believe either will ever happen.

The problem is that these two ideas are completely contradictory. If one really believes that increased spending will help the economy rebound, then deficit spending is wonderful. Deficit spending should be encouraged until the recession is clearly over. If you really believe that reducing the deficit is good plan which frees up credit for entrepreneurs, then you typically do not go around suggesting that hundreds of billions be spent on bailouts and stimulus. Maybe one of these ideas works. Maybe they both do. But they sure as hell don’t work together.

Obama needs to realize that he cannot be all things to all people. Yes, a broad coalition decided to elect Obama over a bimbo and blowhard, but eventually you have to define what it is exactly that you stand for. You cannot be both a supporter of fat-cat bailouts and an ardent populist; you cannot be an anti-war candidate who expands the war in Afghanistan and into Pakistan; you cannot be both Keynes and von Mises.

If Obama does not want to go down in history as the biggest joke of a president ever, he needs to find a base and stick with it. He’s losing moderates with his bank tax, he lost conservatives with health care, and he’s going to lose liberals too if he keeps up his deficit attacks. The president’s approval ratings will stay up for a while; people are typically hesitant to admit they supported a loser (see: people who still think Bush was an awesome president). If, however, Obama does not find firm ground to stand on soon, he may discover that he’s fighting a war without an army, and that is no way to win a midterm election.

Young Americans for Liberty began the year with an event that distributed Constitutions to the student body on Constitution Day. In one of our less provocative events, which Thakur fails to mention, we were successful in distributing nearly 300 Constitutions to the student body. Our next event was a free trade versus fair trade coffee tasting, which distributed information on the problems with the supposed “fair” trade system. We then held a film screening for “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” which questioned the veracity of claims made by global warming alarmists. Thakur attacked this film in a different article despite the fact that she admittedly did not bother to watch it. She mistakenly claimed that YAL was an arm of the Republican Party and went on to attempt a film review based on the movie’s trailer. Next came our infamous, yet fantastically successful gulag event. Finally, we held a well-attended rally outside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis building that called for transparency in our nation’s central banking system.

Thakur, however, seeks to characterize YAL based solely on her poor interpretation of our gulag event. The gulag was not intended to represent the state of the country under the Obama administration as Thakur suggests, but rather to show the inevitable consequences of continuing down the road to serfdom on which the United States has been marching for nearly 100 years.
Thakur describes our gulag as distasteful, inappropriate, bizarre and offensive to those who actually suffered under the tyranny of the Soviet Union. This description is wildly inaccurate and does not in any way reflect the success of the gulag event. Following the event, YAL received considerable donations from political groups around St. Louis who praised our activism and initiative. We then went on to receive a $500 award from the national Young Americans for Liberty organization for the best Berlin Wall event in the country. We have received praise for our event from several other national political organizations such as Campus Reform, Campaign for Liberty and biggovernment.com.

Furthermore, Thakur’s assertion that the display was offensive to those who suffered under the Soviet Union simply does not reflect the response we received. For instance, I was recently approached by a German immigrant who thanked me for the event, as it called attention to the oft-forgotten horrors suffered by her father, who was imprisoned by the Soviets many years ago. Also, this Tuesday, Wash. U. YAL will be holding a lecture by a retired Washington University professor, Dr. Gregory Nikiforovich, who lived in the Soviet Union until 1989, was very grateful for our event, and will be speaking on the implementation of socialism in his former country. It seems to me that the only people who were offended by the gulag were not those affected by the horrors of socialism, but rather socialists themselves who were made uncomfortable by the frank portrayal of the results of their ideology.

Thakur then makes the patently false claim that we devote the majority of the space on our Web site to attacking individuals who disagree with us. Despite her claims to the contrary, there is nothing on our Web site that attacks the Students for Fair Trade. The Web site merely acknowledges the fact that the group refused to engage us. There is a video of the Event Services personnel conspiring to shut down our gulag; but neither the video nor the post contains commentary on the nature of Event Services’ actions.

Thakur spends the rest of her article attacking a comment made by John Burns and posting on our group’s Web site. She characterizes Burns as an ungrateful student of Washington University and another “disgruntled” member of YAL. A quick perusal of our Web site, however, reveals that Burns is neither a member of YAL nor a student at Washington University, but rather the owner of the construction company which erected our gulag.

Thakur should just be honest: She doesn’t approve of our group’s message of liberty. That is fine; she certainly isn’t the first. But to cherry-pick and mischaracterize  facts in an attempt to cast our organization as some sort of band of vicious reactionaries is incorrect and inappropriate. I encourage Thakur to attend one of our meetings if she wishes to better understand our goals.

What is a state sovereignty resolution, you ask? The typical state sovereignty resolution begins by a recitation of the 10th Amendment—the idea being that members of Congress must have forgotten it. Then, the resolutions go on to declare that the Federal government has overstepped its boundaries and should immediately cease and desist any action that is not explicitly delegated to them by the Constitution. The resolutions also call for an end to all federal mandates that are tied to funding.

These resolutions do not carry the force of law, but rather are used to convey the sense of the legislature. Following passage, copies are sent to the president, vice president, all congressional leaders and the governors and legislatures of every state, all of whom, no doubt, diligently read them, change their behavior and respond with letters of gratification for the legislatures’ initiative.

Despite being a boon to the U.S. Postal Service, these resolutions should be considered the first step in the process of states asserting their right to govern themselves. Over the past century, the federal government has found a way to insert its grubby fingers into state policy at every available opportunity. From No Child Left Behind to REAL ID (the nationalization of driver’s licenses) to mandates that determine the age at which one can legally drink and the speed at which one can drive on a state’s road, the federal government seems to be under the impression that their constitutional mandate extends to every conceivable action in the course of a human’s life.

One might say that the interstate commerce clause is justification for all federal intervention. Interpretation of the interstate commerce clause, however, has descended into the realm of the ridiculous. Take, for instance, the story of Roscoe Filburn, a farmer who grew wheat for his own farm and for sale to locals for home use. Filburn was fined for growing more than his quota of wheat under a federal law dictating the amount of wheat an individual could produce. In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled in Wickard v. Filburn that Congress was justified in its regulation because Filburn’s wheat could have been sold on the open market and thereby potentially depress the price of wheat.

Such interpretations of the federal government’s authority could not possibly have been anticipated by the Framers of the Constitution. It seems that nearly 70 years after Filburn, some states have finally had enough of federal meddling in areas that are clearly in a state’s jurisdiction. As the authors of state sovereignty resolutions convene to plot their next move, it is unclear what the future of the sovereignty movement will be. Could several states band together, nullify a federal law and spark a Supreme Court case that could define our modern understanding of the federalist relationship? Given the fervor of state sovereignty supporters, the possibility is very real.

Phil is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at pchristofanelli@hotmail.com.

Currently under the United States Code, the Fed is exempt from audit regarding “(1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country or nonprivate international financing organization; (2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters (3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or (4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)-(3) of this subsection,” or, as I like to put it: everything they do. H.R. 1207 removed exceptions one through four and opened the Fed to audits of all their dealings.

When the bill was referred to the House Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee, the language was weakened by Chairman Mel Watt, D-N.C. Watt, who has received more than $200,000 from the commercial banking industry since he entered Congress, stripped the bill of all sections allowing for an audit, leaving only a hollow call for Fed transparency. It is unlikely that Watt, whose district has been gerrymandered such that he could be caught with a goat and still be re-elected, has been receiving very many calls from his constituents demanding a completely secret central banking system. Therefore, it is probable that Watt has other interests in mind when he prevents Federal Reserve transparency from becoming a reality.

The Federal Reserve is regarded by the Austrian School of Economics to be the engine of the business cycle. In a theory promoted by Austrian economists such as Freidrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, the Fed causes the business cycle by setting the interest rate lower than the natural rate dictated by the market. This deludes producers into believing there are more savings in the economy than truly exist and causes them to take excessive risks to produce more than could possibly be consumed.Consequently, producers have to take major losses and retract their projects. Furthermore, the Fed’s inflationary monetary policy, agreements with foreign nations and collusion with large banks affect everyone. The Federal Reserve is a creature of Congress, and therefore, it is the right of the people to know what the Fed is up to.

There are concerns, of course, about preventing sensitive financial information from being released immediately. For this reason, the author of the bill, Congressman Ron Paul, has agreed to a time lapse between Fed action and an audit. This compromise is fair, and there is no reason why the American people cannot have full transparency in their central bank after such precautions have been added. The United States has now come the closest to Federal Reserve transparency since its mysterious inception on Jekyll Island 96 years ago. The more the Fed resists these efforts, the more reason we have to believe they have something to hide.

Philip is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at pchristofanelli@hotmail.com.

In a recent forum concerning the coming change in tobacco policy hosted by Controversy ’N’ Coffee on Thursday, Sept. 24, I had the pleasure of hearing your perspective alongside those of two other University professors. In presenting your position, you made the claim that the University served as the “parent” of attending students. You went on to state that in order to fulfill this parental role, the University should take a stronger role in regulating the individual health decisions of each student. I was most disheartened by this comment, and I regret to inform you that the assertion is inaccurate, misguided and evil.  You went on to refer to smokers as “diseased,” but the real disease here is not my pastime, but rather your ideology, which lowers every student in this University to the state of a peon incapable of making his own decisions correctly. Unfortunately, not even an army of Purell dispensers can erase this diseased worldview from existence. I advise that you take a lesson in the basic economic concept of a voluntary exchange prior to making such claims about our status.

Washington University is an institution that provides a service: education. Because it would be inefficient for me to teach myself, I am willing to compensate the University in exchange for this service. In doing so, the University and I both acknowledged that we have rights and that we must provide an equal value to one another when entering this contract. As a free adult, it would be irrational for me to consent to such an arrangement that would transform me into the University’s minion.

To support your claim that the University should take an active role in our personal health decisions, you cited the doctrine of in loco parentis. Because universities primarily consist of adults over the age of 18, this doctrine is irrelevant and rarely applied as law. The necessity of in loco parentis for a middle school teacher simply is not present for a university dealing with a mature student population, especially in the case of Washington University students, who were selected from among the brightest in the nation.

It must be recognized that we, the students of Washington University, already have parents. In most cases, they raised us, cared for us, loved us, comforted us, protected us and supported us in our endeavors. For these reasons, they are given a special claim on our lives and a voice in the decisions we make for ourselves. The University, on the other hand, provided none of these aforementioned aids in our childhood. To state that the University is on the same level as these individuals who dedicated their lives to improving ours is insulting to parents everywhere and demeans the critical service which they provide to the development of our society.

I remind you, Professor Benson, that we children are your customers. Many of us work very hard to provide you with a platform on which you can advocate our regulation. You are most fortunate that you are employed by a university, for in any other firm, blatantly insulting the competency of your customers often leads to summary dismissal.

We come to Washington University as adults. We make our own decisions. We determine our own values. We work to achieve our own goals as we see fit. We are not the children of the University that we voluntarily pay for a service. We are not pawns in your vision for a perfect society.

You should be ashamed of reducing every student in this community to the status of a helpless child. You should be ashamed of bastardizing the solemn relation of each person to his true parents. And I believe that you should apologize for this insulting comment if you wish to remain, in the eyes of your students, a professor of good standing and high moral character.

In liberty,
Philip Christofanelli

Philip is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at pchristofanelli@hotmail.com.